


Secrets Revealed

by helsinkibaby



Series: Partners [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Gen, Probably Pre Relationship, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:04:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5279561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Detective Caitlin Snow inadvertently reveals her meta human abilities to her partner, but she's the one who gets a surprise. Turns out she's not the only one with a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets Revealed

**Author's Note:**

> I began to write this for a comment fic prompt and have no idea how it ended up as this length. With a possible/probable universe attached to it. 
> 
> Prompt :  
> http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/666055.html?thread=88811463#t88811463  
> any, any, secret identity

Detective Caitlin Snow sits at her desk, stares across the room at the Captain's office and chews her thumbnail nervously. The door has been closed for the last fifteen minutes - she's been counting - and she can just about make out the two participants in the conversation, neither of whom seem to be enjoying it over much. Singh is standing behind his desk, hands raised and moving as if he's conducting a symphony but if the look on his face is anything to go by, Joe isn't exactly singing the right notes. What her partner is doing, on the other hand, is standing his ground, lips pressed into a thin line and when he throws a glance to his left, towards the bullpen where she is sitting, she looks down, finds something very interesting in her paperwork. 

Footsteps stop at her desk and she looks up into the easy smile and concerned eyes of her former partner. "That does not look good." Eddie's frown deepens as he looks into the office and when he looks down at Caitlin, he lifts one eyebrow. "I guess I should tell Iris he won't be joining us for Tuesday night dinner?"

Despite the situation, or maybe because of it, Caitlin forces a chuckle to her lips. "Unless the dinner is liquid, I highly doubt it."

Eddie snickers and she finds herself wishing for the days when it was just the two of them partnered up together, before the world went to hell in a hand basket. "Copy that." One more look towards the office and then he takes a step away from her desk. "I'll tell Iris to tread carefully."

Resisting the urge to point out that he'd be better off telling Iris to hide her dad's gun, or at the very least the ammunition, Caitlin lets him go, fills in paperwork half heartedly until another shadow falls across her desk. When she looks up, it's into the dark eyes and stony face of her new partner. Her heart sinks because he's worn that look often in the early days of their partnership and she'd thought they'd moved past that. Then again, he's just found out her secret so she supposes she shouldn't be surprised. Swallowing hard, she presses her lips together and waits for him to speak. "I think," he finally says, tapping his index and middle finger against her desk, "we need to talk." Caitlin nods, opens her mouth to speak but he cuts her off. "Not here." He glances around. "Your place. Twenty minutes." 

He leaves first and Caitlin lets him go. 

She gets to her apartment first but it's not long until there's a knock at her front door and she lets him in, fighting the urge to wring her hands. He stands in her living room, looks around him like a detective looking for clues and she looks down, wondering what he's gleaning from his first visit here. When he doesn't speak, she looks up, sees him shake his head when he meets her eyes. "How long?" he asks simply and shock robs her of her ability to speak. Of all the questions she expected him to lead with, that was nowhere near to being on her list. "Your powers," he prompts and her shock deepens. 

"You're not surprised?" The words are out before she can stop them, are met by a dry chuckle. 

"Oh, I'm surprised, partner." He pulls at his tie, loosens it and undoes the top button of his shirt. There's a thin sheen of sweat on his brow and she buys herself some time by going over to the thermostat and lowering it a few notches. Even then, it's still warmer than most apartments, even for this near to Thanksgiving. 

"It started the night that STAR Labs exploded," she tells him and despite his words, he looks as far from surprised as it's possible to be. "Eddie and I were there, extra manpower in the crowd... we were there even after most people had gone home disappointed. There were already rumours of sabotage so I was doing a walk around the perimeter, we'd heard reports that there was a man seen lurking around the back of the building..." She closes her eyes, able to remember every moment, every sight, every sound. The rumble of the ground underneath her feet, the roar that gathered in volume and intensity, the rush of air as she was thrown across the alley... 

"Hey..." Joe's hand is on her shoulder and the heat of his touch brings her back to reality. Her head whips around to look at him and he recoils, eyes wide, at whatever he sees in her face. "Your eyes go white, you know that?" 

She didn't and she draws in a shuddering breath, lets it out with a visible puff of air. Joe shivers and she knows it's not just because of what he saw. The room has chilled noticeably and she clenches her fists tightly, tries to regain some control.

"I must have been knocked out," she says. "And when I came to, I was lying in the alley, there was a hole in the wall of the building that wasn't there before and there was a pool of some kind of liquid all around me." She wrinkles her nose because it had stunk to high heaven, had ruined one of her favourite suits too, but she didn't share that detail with Joe. "I got to the front of the building and..." She blows out air between her lips; it's invisible this time. Good. "Eddie saw me, got me checked out, we went back to the station..." And by the time she'd got there, Barry Allen was on his way to hospital, his lab in shambles from the lightning strike, and Joe was on the way there too, his partner already dead, his son at death's door. "You know the rest." 

Joe rubbed a hand over his lips. "When did you, ah....?" He waves his hand vaguely in her general direction and against all odds, she finds herself fighting back a smile. He hasn't been this awkward around her since their first couple of weeks as partners, when he'd been adjusting to having a son in a coma, grieving his partner and adjusting to a new one, a woman moreover. 

"A couple of weeks later, I started feeling cold, all the time... I just couldn't get warm. And it just got worse and worse... I figured pretty quickly I could absorb heat... creating ice was a surprise..." She bites her lip, tries to hide the childish glee that had come with that discovery. "I could control it. Then, when I got the hang of it. But lately..." She shudders, and it's nothing to do with feeling cold. 

"It's getting worse." Joe's voice is heavy and she nods. "So every time we hear of someone frozen in ice shackles..."

"I made sure they never saw me, I never wanted..." Her voice trails off and she realises how much of a shock it must have been for Joe today, catching her literally in the act of freezing a fleeing suspect to the wall. She'd never done it on the job before, keeping her abilities strictly off the clock but she'd slipped today and now she has to pay the price. "What are you going to do?" She squares her shoulders, all ready to be told that he's told Singh everything, or is about to. "If you want to put in for a new partner..."

A noise comes from the back of Joe's throat that she's familiar with, the same one that he makes when he's not happy with a piece of evidence, the same one he makes when a case is going badly. "And what would I tell Singh?" he asks. The answer is obvious and when it hits him, his eyes go wide and he points his finger at her. "I don't know what your previous partner told you-" His lips thin at the mention of her previous partner and Caitlin finds herself glad that Eddie is treating Iris well. "-but partners don't sell each other out."

That sentence is music to Caitlin's ears, but there's another worry. "What if it happens again on the job? It's getting harder to control, Joe... What if I hurt someone? Hurt you?" 

It's her worst fear and she can't keep it in any more. But in a day of surprises, it turns out there's one more left. "I think..." Joe sighs, runs his hand over his mouth again. It's like he's trying to make up his mind about something and she can see in his eyes the moment he decides. "I think I know some people who might be able to help."

*

"So let me get this straight." The guy that Joe had introduced as Cisco looks at Joe with a mixture of shock and glee in his expression. "Your partner... your smoking hot partner, might I add... has the meta human ability to turn people into human popsicles?" At Joe's terse look, he shakes his head. "Gotta love irony."

In the next room, Caitlin sits on a medical bed, her sleeve rolled up past her elbow, meeting the gaze of the other STAR Labs employee, the one who's currently turning her into a human pincushion. "Does he know we can hear him?" she asks and Patty turns, looks through the glass with a fond smile. As Caitlin follows her gaze, Barry leans in, says something into Cisco's ear that makes the other man's jaw drop, makes both the colour and any sense of amusement drain from his face. 

"He does now." Patty's grin fades when she looks back to Caitlin. "You're looking pale... you're not going to faint on me, are you?"

Caitlin tries to smile, but it doesn't quite get there. "It's been a hell of a day," she says and Patty nods. 

"Understatement?" she says simply and Caitlin can only agree. 

"For so long, I thought it was just me," she says, looking all around her, her eyes always returning to he cabinet in the other room, the one with the Flash's suit securely stored away. "When Joe told me..." Her voice fades because she still can't get used to the idea of Barry Allen, Joe's geeky foster kid, the one who drives Captain Singh to distraction because he's late for everything, is actually The Flash. Come to that, she can't quite get her head around the fact that The Flash is actually real, not one of those urban legends that you hear about. There have been a lot of them lately, she knows Iris West has a blog about them and suddenly she realises that each and every one of those stories has a good chance of being true. That each and every one of them is a person just like her, when she'd been so convinced that she was alone. It's enough to make her head spin a little bit more and thin lines deepen on Patty's forehead. 

"I think that's enough blood for now," she decides, tidying Caitlin up and when she tries to get to her feet, pushing her back to sit down on the bed. "Stay here for a minute, OK? I'm sure we have some orange juice in the refrigerator, and I might even be able to get Cisco to break into his candy bar stash for the greater good."

She squeezes Caitlin's shoulder in an apparent show of support and when she leaves the room, Joe takes her place in a second. "How you doing there, partner?" he asks and she reaches up, squeezes the bridge of her nose before she answers. 

"I'm just thinking that I thought having to come clean to you was as weird as my day was going to get," she says. She reaches down, grips the edge of the bed so tightly that her knuckles turn white. "Who knew you had secrets of your own?"

Joe holds up his hands. "Not my secret to tell." Which is a fair point, she supposes. "Besides, since Barry woke up... since he's been doing what he's been doing? I've spent more than half that time trying to talk him out of it... or at least trying to get him to be more careful." He glances over his shoulder, back into the other room where Cisco and Barry are talking quietly before they are joined by another person, this one a familiar face. Very familiar, even if he hasn't been seen since the day of the explosion, and a shiver runs the length of Caitlin's spine. 

"Harrison Wells." She says his name aloud and from the corner of her eye, she sees Joe's reaction to it. It's quickly gone, his features rearranged rapidly into bland neutrality but Caitlin has been this man's partner for nine months now and that's long enough to notice and catalogue even the slightest reaction. The thin line of his lips, the slight flare of his nostrils, the stiffening of his shoulders, she notices them all and it tells her one thing loud and clear - no matter what these people have done for Barry, no matter what he thinks they might be able to do for her, Joe West does not trust Harrison Wells. 

And when Wells looks at her, when their eyes meet and another shiver runs down Caitlin's spine, she knows why. That deeply ingrained cop's instinct that Joe has, she has it too and it's shrieking so loudly that she's surprised it's not actually audible. 

She moves her eyes from Wells to Joe, lifts one eyebrow in a barely perceptible question, but he's her partner too, and he's been a cop for longer. A quick jerk of his chin downwards indicates that he understands but she knows that this isn't exactly the place to discuss it. 

"He came to me when Barry was in the hospital," Joe tells her instead. "Told me that if they brought him here, they could help him." He shrugs, hands balled into fists and jammed into his trouser pockets. "It's worked out OK so far."

Those last two words are the ones that worry her but before she can ask, Patty arrives back in, a glass of orange juice in one hand and some candy bars in the other. "I got you these," she says. "Sip the juice and eat slowly... I gave Cisco the vials of your blood, he's running some preliminary tests... Come out when you're ready." She gives Caitlin a little smile, bounces on the balls of her feet as she turns and makes her way into the other room. 

Caitlin takes a sip of the juice as instructed, places it carefully on the bed beside her and hopes it won't spill. A square of the candy later and she's surprised to find she's actually feeling a little more human. She gives Joe a small smile and he takes a step towards her. "If you're not comfortable here," he says and his voice is so quiet she can barely hear him, "say the word, and we're gone."

She considers it with another sip of the juice. "I'm OK," she says and his dark eyes show their doubt. "Whatever happened to me... they might have some answers. And I think... I think I need that." 

Joe nods and even if his expression doesn't change, his eyes flicker with something that almost looks like appreciation. "You got it." 

He stands by her side, waits for her to drain the glass, make a good dent in the candy. When she's had enough, she folds the wrapper neatly closed, leaves it on the bed and goes to stand. Turns out that it might have been a little soon because she sways on her feet and Joe is there in an instant, his hand on her elbow, gripping tightly, holding her up. His eyes are wide with something that flickers between surprise and fear and Caitlin's heart beats double time too. "I'm OK," she tells him when she has her feet under her and he raises one eyebrow, the picture of scepticism. "Really," she adds because she's spent a hell of a long time trying to get her colleagues not to treat her like she's some fragile little flower and she has no interest in going back over that tired old ground. 

"I know," Joe says but he doesn't let go of her elbow as they walk out into the other room and, truth be told, Caitlin's glad of it, particularly when every pair of eyes turns to her as they enter. 

"Detective Snow, I assume." Harrison Wells's voice is silky smooth, perfectly congenial, his tone friendly, his expression open. The hackles still rise on the back of Caitlin's neck but she's trained enough not to show it. "I wish we were meeting under different circumstances."

Caitlin forces a smile to her lips, hopes that if anyone sees it's not genuine that they'll just put it down to nerves about the situation she finds herself in. "What have you found out?" she asks and Wells runs a finger over his lips as he regards her. 

Yeah, that's not creepy at all. 

"From your description of where you were when the explosion happened," he said, calling up a map of the lab, "the liquid that you encountered was from the coolant towers."

Patty sucks in a breath and Cisco whistles. "There were thousands of gallons stored there," he says and Caitlin sees in her mind's eye the amount of liquid around her when she woke up, how it had been easily an inch deep on the ground.

"Sounds about right," she says, wrinkling her nose at the memory. "It was like I'd taken a bath in the stuff." The smell had lingered on her skin for days. 

Patty purses her lips sympathetically. "One outfit you'll never wear again," she observes and even as the men roll their eyes, Caitlin gives her a smile. 

"Yeah." Cisco sounds like he doesn't know what to do with that. "That also tracks with what we found with a preliminary look at your blood." He presses a few buttons on his tablet and one of the big screens come to life, an image on it that is reminiscent of one of Caitlin's high school biology classes. She recognises the vague outlines of red blood cells but the rest...

"What is wrong with them?" Joe's voice is a cross between amazed and appalled and Caitlin can't blame him. Her knees feel distinctly rubbery and as if he can tell, Joe grips her elbow more tightly. 

"These are Caitlin's red blood cells, obviously." Cisco points to the outline. "The little grey boogers clinging to them like a limpet? If I had to guess? Molecules of the coolant that you went swimming in that somehow got into your bloodstream and fused there because of the dark matter from the reactor." He tilts his head, looks her up and down like he can tell where the coolant entered just by looking at her. "I assume you were cut?"

Caitlin nods but it's Joe who speaks. "She was a walking wound." Caitlin looks at him sharply because they hadn't even been partners then and he'd had more on his mind at the time than how she looked. As if she's asking a question, Joe looks at her and shrugs. "You and Eddie came to the hospital, I asked him if you'd just checked yourself out..." His lips twist in a ghost of a smile. "He said you were too damn stubborn to let the doctors see you and that you kept insisting you were fine."

Remembering those conversations with Eddie - there had been more than one - Caitlin feels her cheeks warm. "Not that it would have mattered," Cisco tells them, drawing their attention back to him. "By then, the damage was already done." 

Which is not a turn of phrase Caitlin finds promising. If the frown that appears on Joe's face is any indication, he feels the same way. The words freeze in her throat and it's left to Joe to ask, "But you can help her, right? Clean her blood, do what it is you people do?"

There's a horrible silence where all the STAR Labs team look at one another. It's broken when Cisco audibly gulps and Barry sucks in a deep breath before he speaks. "No," he says, looking at Caitlin with an expression that resembles nothing so much as a wounded puppy. "They can't." 

"The coolant molecules are fused with your blood cells," Patty tells her. "There's no way of removing them. I'm sorry." 

"We might be able to rig up something to help with the temperature issue," Cisco says, motioning to Caitlin, a wave of his hand pointing out how she has her arms wrapped around herself, trying to stave off the cold that was flooding her from the inside out. "Some kind of implant to help you regulate it..."

The ache of disappointment starts in her chest, rises into her throat and she nods, trying to remember to be grateful, that if she'd been told a few hours ago that there was that much hope, she would have grabbed at it with both hands. "That would be great," she says and even if she knows her smile is weak, she still forces it to the surface. "I've been dreading paying my heating bills on a cop's salary." 

Poor as it is, the joke breaks the tension and Cisco bounces on the balls of his feet, a grin breaking through. "Excellent. So, give me a couple of days to get some designs together, I can get in touch with you through Joe or Barry... Unless you want to give me your number. Which it's totally cool if you don't, I mean..." He breaks off to glare at Barry, who is snickering behind his hand. 

"Smooth, man," Barry mutters and Caitlin, well used to guys and how they interact with one another, ignores the whole thing and pulls her cell phone out of her jacket pocket, unlocks it and tosses it to Cisco. "Sounds like a plan," she says and Cisco looks delighted, makes short work of programming in his number, his own phone ringing for a second in his shirt pocket before he hands the phone back to her. 

"I will be in touch," he says and Caitlin gives him a quick smile before glancing at Joe, barely lifting one eyebrow and tilting her head ever so slightly. 

Bless the man, being her partner for the last few months means that he picks up on her meaning straight away and he pulls his car keys it of his pocket. "What do you say, partner, we'll leave these guys to it?" 

He frames it like a question, like it's his idea, not hers, and she plays along, says her thank yous and goodbyes and allows Joe to lead her back along through the labyrinth until they reach his car. They walk in silence and to anyone else, it would look like each of them were lost in their own thoughts. Caitlin knows better. 

She waits until they've left the compound before she glances over at him. "You want to tell me why you brought me there when you clearly don't trust Harrison Wells?"

His eyes shift to her for the barest second, his lips lifting ever so slightly at the edges but he doesn't deny it. "They helped Barry," he tells her with a shrug. "Saved his life. Had his back since he's been doing what he's been doing. Cisco's a good kid, Patty seems to be..."

"But Wells gives you the heeby-jeebies." Caitlin remembers the way he looked at her, a strange glint in his eye that she couldn't fathom and Joe reaches out, ratchets up the thermostat. 

"You too, huh?" Another one of those side eyed looks and if she didn't know better, she'd say he looked impressed. "Barry's hero-worshipped him for years, Cisco and Patty stayed when everyone else jumped ship... I was starting to think it was just me being a suspicious bastard."

"Not just you." She reaches up and rubs the back of her neck, as if that will banish the sensation of her skin crawling. "I'd put it down to me being an unknown quantity, that he's cautious about who he lets into his lab, but..." 

Her voice trails off as she tries to find the words and when she's taking too long, Joe prompts her with a, "But?" 

"His eyes," she finally decides. "Something about his eyes is off." She can't put it any better than that but Joe must know what she means because he nods. 

"Windows to the soul." Caitlin would agree except the thought comes to her that, from what she saw in Wells's eyes that night, if the eyes were indeed the windows to the soul, then Wells's eyes were dark and dangerous, the kind that she wouldn't trust in a million years if she saw them on the job. The idea that she might be trusting her life to a man like that has her stomach turning over. She bites her lip and her thoughts must show on her face because Joe gives her another quick glance and when he speaks again, his voice is dismayed. "Hey, partner, don't look so worried. You think I'd bring you there if I thought they'd hurt you?"

She doesn't have to think about her answer to that. She parleys it into a joke though, making an exaggeratedly thoughtful face. "I guess there are easier ways to get a new partner," she says and he greets that with a snort.

"Took me long enough to break you in," he observes. "Besides, knowing my luck they'd pair me with Thawne and I'd spend the whole day trying to get him to not tell me about his relationship with my daughter."

Caitlin grins. "Leave Eddie alone," she says, loyalty to her old partner rearing its head. "He's a good guy and he adores Iris."

"Uh-huh." Joe's pursed lips speak volumes. "Don't think, by the way, that I'm over you not telling me about the two of them." 

"What was it you said earlier? Something about something not being your secret to tell?" Caitlin has no problem throwing his own words back to him and he turns that look of disgust on her. 

"You're quoting me now. Great."

"Hey, I only steal from the best." She goes all in, gives him her most charming smile - the one that bests recalcitrant suspects, obstreperous witnesses and the occasional little old lady - and actually bats her eyelashes at him. It's lucky they're nearly at her apartment by then and that the roads are deserted at this hour of the night, or rather morning, because when he sees the expression on her face, he startles so much that the wheel jerks unbeknownst to him and when he gets the car back under control he's chuckling the rest of the way. 

"Maybe I do need a new partner," he decides when he parks in front of her building and she shrugs. 

"You'd miss me too much," she tells him and he turns in his seat so that he can look at her properly. 

"You know," he says, and his voice is quiet, serious, "I just might." 

Considering how long it took him to trust her when they began working together - if you could call it that; she covered a lot of shifts and paperwork alone when he was at Barry's bedside and never said a thing about it - Caitlin will take that. "Thank you," she says, looking down, pulling at a non existent loose thread at the seam of her pants. "For tonight... for trusting me. You didn't have to-"

"I kinda did." He cuts her off and for once it doesn't make her blood boil. "Partners have each other's backs."

"Then I'm glad you're mine." It's a dangerously sappy thing to say, something that she would never say on an ordinary day. Then again, today is anything but ordinary.

And because of that, Joe doesn't bust her chops for it, instead gives a one word answer that she never thought she'd hear from his lips. "Ditto."


End file.
